Adhesive Strips

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Ernest Hemmingway1

Comforting words, right? But it’s nice to know that someone like Hemmingway even felt the pain of being a writer. Ever since I can remember writing has been part of my life, more precisely ever since I could structure sentences into paragraphs writing has been part of my life. My first story went something like this: One day there was a girl, she wore a red cape. One day she went into the woods to visit her grandmother and she saw a wolf. This wolf wanted to eat her. She ran away from the wolf. The end.2

Hey, they say even the majority of Shakespeare’s work isn’t original when it comes to the plot! 3

As I grew (I grew quite slowly and I’m sure this pain has contributed to some of my writing, passion and pain might as well be synonyms) I continued to write. I began to think about plot and characters. As time went on I began to think about the character’s motivation and sentence structure. The clock moved forward as usual and I started picking apart my character’s dialogue. Eleven years later, here I am! A full-fledged writer.4

And by ‘full-fledged writer’ I mean fanfiction and the school newspaper.5

One thing that has always helped me with writing and improving my writing (besides plot bunnies and wonderful editors) is reading. I know, it sounds retrogressive! But honestly you are supposed to learn from the masters, right? And whether your master is JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Stephen King, James Patterson, Emily Dickens or good ol’ Shakes himself doesn’t matter. Read that author and embrace that author’s writing, see how that author has created his or her own beautiful sentences.6

I saw my greatest improvement in writing when I started writing fanfiction like the apocalypse was coming down the back of my shirt. Having someone tell me that Bella or Edward or Alice seem out of character was unacceptable-- it had to be perfect! (Conduct a poll and I bet 98% of writers, professionals and amateurs, will call themselves perfectionists… it goes hand in hand with the masochism.) I reveled in the stress of recreating these well love characters (well loved in their obsessive, fanatic cult of a fan base, at least.)7

A lot of people will tell you to write what you know, that’s my equivalent of writing an hour a day. I simply can’t write what I know because to me, what I know is so boring. I’ll let someone else write about a mixed family of seven with an autistic kid, a dog, a cat and a bunny and only three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s exciting and ABC would jump on that plot for their TGIF line-up, but that’s just another day to me. So, don’t write what you know… because if everyone did write what they knew Meyer, Rowling and King would be screwed seven ways from Sunday.8

The only time I would say don’t write what you don’t know is with humor and sarcasm. If you aren’t sarcastic or humorous in real life, it’s going to be awhile before you can pull it off in writing. (I don’t mean that to be as harsh as it sounds.)9

So, what do you want to write? Is it some hot beach romance? A vampire love story? A magical world? A world war? If you are uncomfortable writing it, don’t write it. There is no law saying that you must write a sex scene or death scene in order to consider yourself a great writer. Of course, if that’s in your plot, then it’s a little harder. A sex scene can be written around, while actors always say that they would only do a sex scene if it was part of their character’s development sex in books generally just ends up as pornography. 10

DREAMLAND and THIS LULLABY (both by Sarah Dessen) are excellent examples or writing around a sex scene. WICKED LOVELY (by Melissa Marr) again, writes around the scene but gives the reader a little more to chew on. THIS IS ALL (by Aidan Chambers) is a great example of both a way to write a sex scene (three times in it’s 800 pages, I believe) and how to write around a sex scene (maybe a few times, writing around a sex scene obviously isn’t as memorable as a full out sex scene.)11

Answering Your Questions 12

WRITING STYLES13

Writing with a certain style will come with time, I’m 18 and I know that at 15 I would not have been writing with the variety that I am now. Be sure that you are not comparing yourself with someone that you simply can’t match at 15. It sucks, but it’s true. Of course, there is the few and far in between of those who can write like a 30-year-old at the age of 15. But, where’s the fun in that? At 15 you can take the lovely pain of being 15 and apply it to your writing.14

GRAMMAR15

The key to grammar is simple… use spell check, listen to the Grammar Girl podcast and make a friend who understands how to use commas. Why both yourself with learning how to use them when someone else already knows how? (I’m kidding, what I mean is that you shouldn’t stress out about semi-colons and commas and whatnot because you will catch on.)16

DESCRIPTION17

Here’s what I have to say about description… don’t do it. At least, don’t do it in the way that some people do. You should not, under any circumstances, greet the reader with a paragraph of where the two character’s are and then two paragraph’s devoted to each character. I would have two faceless, nameless characters than read that. Description should be natural, perhaps girl 1 says something haughty and flips her luscious bottle-brunette hair over her dainty shoulder. Maybe the nervous girl from a poverty struck home pulls her shirt down over her protruding hipbones. Perhaps the geeky guy puts his glasses back on his acne-covered face after being pushed down. KISS. Keep it sweet and simple.18

CONCETRATION19

When you want to write, you’ll write. Keep a notebook with you at all times because of this. I have days where I write seven pages non-stop (that’s where the bleeding fingers come in) and I have days where I can’t even write seven coherent sentences with a gun to my head. Writing is art and that’s what makes it hard and painful because with art, you need to be inspired to perform. There’s no symptoms to cure or button to press. Doctors and factory workers… psh, they don’t know how easy they have it. When inspiration hits you, it’ll hit you and you’ll sit in the chair with scrapped up palms and knees and write your little heart out. It’ll hurt, but it’ll happen.20

Pain really is one of the keys to writing, so get out your band-aids and start writing and whatever you do, don’t ever stop.21